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5509 :: Announcement: Use Nim for programming on Bluetooth chips

• foldl (orginal) [2019-11-14T09:19:24+01:00] view original

  Hi all,

  We are a startup in China, making Bluetooth Low Energy chips. We are happy to adopt Nim in parallel with C/C++ in our SDK([1]).

  There are many benefits to use Nim instead of C.

  • Meta-programming

    With metaprogramming, we can create advertising and GATT profile at compile time, which has 0 overhead in runtime. Truly awesome.

    For example, to create an iBeacon (for WeChat Shake):

    let
          advData = ToArray([Flags({LEGeneralDiscoverableMode, BR_EDR_NotSupported}),
                             iBeacon("{E9052F1E-9D67-4A6E-B2D7-459D132D6A94}",
                                     0, 0, -50)])
        
    Run

  • Strongly Typed

    Nim is more strongly typed than C, which can help to make code safer.

  • Interacting with C

    c2nim rocks. (Later, I got to know nimterop, tried, and fount that c2nim seems better for our case)

  Thank @Araq and many others for making this happen.

  P.S. Our chip is on the way to mass production and will be general available soon.

  [1]: https://github.com/ingchips/sdk/releases/tag/v2.0.0

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• PMunch (orginal) [2019-11-14T10:02:29+01:00] view original

  Very cool to see that you are supporting Nim! There aren't a whole lot of users on these kind of platforms using Nim yet, but as you mentioned there are some really good reasons to do it

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• lxdong (orginal) [2019-11-14T10:55:59+01:00] view original

  It's very exciting to hear this anncouncement. We are Chinese Nim community aims to promote Nim practice globally.As PMunch mentioned, these kind of platforms using Nim are really rare by far, your production would be a great encourage for Nim. I have send you our QQ group number of community on Zhihu, welcome to join and discuss Nim further.

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• mratsim (orginal) [2019-11-14T22:50:39+01:00] view original

  I don't know how you design your chips but if you are using Verilog, be sure to checkout this repo: https://github.com/kaushalmodi/nim-systemverilog-dpic

  And awesome news!

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• foldl (orginal) [2020-01-15T04:54:42+01:00] view original

  Just in case that someone is curious:

  • Examples using Nim:

  https://github.com/ingchips/ING918XX_SDK_SOURCE/tree/master/examples-nim

  • A little meta-programming for Bluetooth:

  https://github.com/ingchips/ING918XX_SDK_SOURCE/blob/master/src/Tools/btdatabuilder.nim

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• nimian (orginal) [2024-04-10T12:44:26+02:00] view original

  Ultimately was this a failure? Since I dont see much nim code at ingchips anymore or at least not in the public repos.

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• PMunch (orginal) [2024-04-10T13:33:44+02:00] view original

  Seems to still be some Nim code shipped with their SDKs: https://github.com/ingchips/ING918XX_SDK_SOURCE/tree/a15b9e7b03e72ace237a0680de541548a48d059f/examples-gcc/smart_home_hub

  Should be fairly easy to use Nim with any such chip though, but cool that they have official examples!

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